


After you Kissed Me

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, Post canon, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 04:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17217164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Dutchy comes over to help Specs celebrate his 24th birthday. Unrequited Specs/Dutchy





	After you Kissed Me

Dutchy didn’t get a lot of time off working for Kloppman, but he’d hardly had to ask the old man about Specs’ twenty-fourth birthday, before being granted an entire night of freedom and a half bottle of wine to sweeten the bargain.

“Don’t let that joker think I’ve gone sentimental in my old age,” Kloppman had warned, waving the wine in Dutchy’s face so that he had to make a wild grab for it. “These is the sourest grapes I ever tasted. Might as well be giving you vinegar. Ha!”

It wasn’t a lie. The wine was just plain old, not aged in the way that fancy mucking mucks liked to go about it. The bottle was dusty, and a fly had found its way inside, to die drunk and happy, lending its essence to the vintage. Even so, Specs pretended to wipe away tears at the gift.

“Ain’t a man alive like old Kloppman,” Specs said.

“I oughta know, seein’ as he’s grooming me to be Kloppman Junior the Second,” Dutchy agreed.

They drank a toast to Kloppman, and then another to their dearly departed fly. The wine was hard to swallow, but some things had to be done.

“See how much I respect my elders?” Dutchy said, smacking his lips to try and rid them of the taste.

“You mean like me?”

That earned Specs a punch in the shoulder, which did nothing to stop his smirk. Dutchy, with his tall, wiry frame, was easily overtaken, and he found himself pushed onto his back on the couch, with Specs looming over him, half crouched with bony knees on either side of Dutchy’s waist.

“Give?” Specs asked. He held onto Dutchy by the wrists. Specs, in his burgeoning adulthood, had been blessed with a certain broadness of the shoulders that Dutchy lacked, but his wire-rimmed glasses still perched funnily on his nose and Dutchy could see himself reflected in them.

“Give, but only if you admit four months don’t make you my elder.”

“Well, unless I’m aging backwards….”

“You’re ancient! Let me up so I can pluck out your grey hairs before anyone else can find ‘em.”

“You really want me to?”

“Yeah?” The question struck Dutchy as odd, and the uncertainty in Specs’ face was even odder. “Not that I’m uncomfortable,” Dutchy said, when Specs didn’t move right away. “Got a pillow for my head and everything. But I guess you probably is. Wouldn’t want you to throw your knees out kneeling over me all night, since you’re talkin’ about getting old now and everyone knows bad knees is part of aging.”

Still Specs didn’t move. Dutchy tried to relax, to prove just how much he didn’t care about this predicament of his. Specs’ breath smelled a little sour and a little bitter. His body was very warm in the places where it touched Dutchy’s, and Dutchy’s cheeks and neck felt pleasantly warm as well. Grand to know the wine was good for something.

When Specs finally swung off of him, his absence was striking. Dutchy sat up quickly, and folded his arms in his lap.

“Wanna finish up Kloppan’s wine,” Specs asked. He was already turning away, heading towards an old wicker drawer that he kept.

“Not on your life.”

Specs laughed. “Want something better?”

“Yes, if you please.”

*******

Out of all the former newsies Dutchy knew (at least those he’d kept up with), Specs had the nicest living quarters. This was owing to a surprise inheritance from his senile old grandma. Dutchy had met her once, back when he and Specs were kids. Specs had thought she was penniless then, and spent all his days and all his pennies trying to make up the cash for her upkeep.

The reward was that Specs got to have his own room with a couch, a bed, and a private toilet that even had a door separating it from his living space. There was one window, and it faced the street rather than a stinking outhouse or the brick wall of some other building. A family would have made the small space crowded, but living on his own as he did, Specs was a king in his castle.

Dutchy, having had quite a lot to drink at this point, was tracing the pattern on the arm of Specs’ couch with his fingertips. It was nice (at least where it wasn’t stained), the fabric made up of swirls and patterns in deep shades of brown, maroon, and navy. it was something that Dutchy could imagine a hypnotist owning, and maybe a hypnotist had, before Dutchy and Swifty had joined forces to steal it from the local dump.

That had been around Specs’ twentieth birthday, when he’d just announced that he was moving out of the lodging house. Bumlets had insisted that the couch was useless, seeing as it only had three and a half out of its four legs. Jack had been the one to suggest piling up bricks to make up the parts that were missing.

Dutchy didn’t know where Bumlets was anymore, or Swifty either. He heard rumors of Jack from time to time, but they’d taken on a sort of mythic quality, divorced from the flesh and blood boy that Dutchy had lived with. Specs, on the other hand, was a constant. He stopped by the lodging house at least once a week, even when he and Dutchy were both busy with their jobs. Sometimes Dutchy helped him sneak into the kitchen to heat up old food that he was trying to make palatable again, since a stove was one of the few things which Specs lacked.

“You tired already?” asked Specs, who was beaming happily, and did not seem tired. He bent down and refilled their wine glasses, giving himself significantly more than he did Dutchy.

“Nah. Just thinking how much I like you. You’re my best friend. My best friend. I known a lot of people, Specs. Lots an’ lots of 'em, but you’re my favorite out of 'em all.”

Specs grinned, and pulled Dutchy in close. The world shifted confusingly, and Dutchy flopped against Specs’ chest and Specs’ heartbeat, arms stretched out at an odd angle somewhere beyond Specs’ lap. Specs tucked Dutchy’s hair behind his ear. “You’re my best friend too, Dutch.”

“Nah,” Dutchy slurred. “I’m like your dizzy… dizzy… ditzy… blonde wife. Your onbenulliga wife.”

That caused Specs to absolutely erupt with laughter. “You’re dizzy alright. Not sure if it’s the wine or your personality. Maybe it’s me, your intended husband.”

“Mmm.”  
Dutchy was aware, though only vaguely, of Specs detangling himself and standing up. Specs removing his shoes for him was more noticed, because it was unusual. Specs helping Dutchy to recline on the couch, and spreading a blanket over his prone form, was registered only in the peripheral of Dutchy’s consciousness.

————–

“How’s your headache,” Specs asked in the morning.

It was quite a question, Dutchy had drooled on the pillow, and probably farted in his sleep (anything with grapes gave him gas), but he didn’t have a headache.

“How’s yours?”

Specs just shrugged. He sat down on the far end of the couch, so Dutchy sat upright, crossing his legs under him, and pulling the blanket in closer. He fumbled for his glasses, then put them on. “Did you mean those things you said last night?” asked Specs.

“'Course! Do you think I’d lie to you on your birthday?” What Dutchy did not mention was that he only half remembered what he’d said.

Specs just nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He was looking at his lap, and Dutchy couldn’t figure out for the life of him why. “But the thing about being my wife…”

Dutchy blushed so hard that he could feel it in his cheeks, and in his neck. That part of the conversation had been so dumb. “Y'know what I mean,” Dutchy tried to explain. “You’s always been smart, and me, I was 20 before I knew my ABCs. I just thought.. I mean last night I was thinking… Sometimes I count on you to be the smart one out of the two of us and…”

Specs silenced him with a hand against his cheek. Dutchy barely had time to swallow, before Specs was leaning in close to kiss him, with chapped, gentle lips. When Dutchy tried to breathe, he brought in Specs’ air with his own, found his mouth open, just barely enough, to let a rough and thoroughly disconcerting tongue snake through. It was the awkward clank of cheap glasses against cheap glasses that brought them apart.

“I…” Dutchy tried to gather his thoughts. “Well… Wow…” Dutchy touched his lips. The sounds of the city that he had known for more than a decade sounded through the window, and yet Dutchy felt more lost than he had on day he arrived at Ellis Island, an 11 year old kid without a lick of English, and a dead parents orphan story that could match anybody’s.

Specs removed own his glasses, and then Dutchy’s, putting them on the couch just behind Dutchy.

“Wanna try that again?” Asked Specs.

“Why?” Dutchy’s voice was higher than unusual, and to hide the squeakiness of it, he made a dive for Specs’ face, or tried to. His depth perception wasn’t the best when his glasses were off, and their foreheads smashed together with a resounding thud.

“Ow,” Specs groaned, in what Dutchy guessed was pain rather than arousal.

“I know. Sorry. But why’re we kissing?”

This time Specs took Dutchy’s hands in his own. His palms were warm and dry, and his long fingers just brushed Dutchy’s wrists, on the inside where the veins were. “I like you, Dutch,” Specs voice cracked a little. “Always have. It okay if I kiss you again? We ain’t got off to the best start, but I can make it good for you, promise.”

Dutchy licked his lips, and tried to imagine Specs’ mouth on his again, Specs’ hands on his body. Well, really one mouth was the same as any other mouth, and hands could be useful for a great many things, no matter who they were attached to. It could be pleasant, and he trusted Specs besides.

Specs trusted him too. That was the problem. Dutchy had already started lean into Specs again, when the thought came to him like a splash of cold water.

“You’re my best friend,” Dutchy said, repeating his words from the night before, but with a defensive edge to his voice that hadn’t been there earlier.

“You’re mine too.”

“I ain’t in love with you or nothin’,” Dutchy spat out. He hoped Specs would laugh, tease him for talking about something as stupid as love, make fun of him for worrying about love, when really Specs just had a new game in mind, like the time Race had offered ten cents to anybody who managed to kiss Bumlets without getting smacked.

Specs didn’t say anything. He just straightened out. “You need some time to think about it?”

“No. I know I ain’t. We can kiss if you want but…”

“It’s alright,” Specs said. He got up off the couch. Dutchy grabbed his glasses and followed.

“We alright?” He put his hands on Specs’ slumping shoulders. “I could… you… Do you want me to make you breakfast? We could go back to the lodge and use the kitchen, or we could head down to Tibby’s, or go down by the river and throw things in it if you like.”

Specs sighed, then half smiled at Dutchy. “Okay,” he said. There was disappointment in his voice, even if he tried to hide it. “Let’s get breakfast.”


End file.
